Round 10

April 2, 2017

Although Americans pretty much can’t agree on anything these days, I’d hazard a guess that Rocky Balboa is someone who we all still cheer for. And telling me that you don’t like Rocky is like telling me you don’t like pizza. I don’t believe you. I, like you, still can’t believe that he got punched in the face for 10 rounds against Apollo Creed and kept standing. He kept fighting.

I traveled 5000 miles in the last 48 hours. It’s at the point where I feel like I need a team of roadies to pack up my stuff and to tell me where I am in the morning. It took 11 hours of driving to get from Gainesville to Richmond. It started well enough with a belly that was still happy to have enjoyed some rather epic hushpuppies in Cedar Key. However, as the hours went by in the tin can of rental car that I was sure would die like a snapped rubber band while accelerating the interstate exit ramp, it felt a bit dire. Do you know what Florence, South Carolina has in common with Florence, Italy? Absolutely nothing. I was a woman with a lead foot on a mission to get to the latter.

I paused in Richmond to gather fuel in the bottom of a negroni and the company of a friend that I will have for life. She and I survived together. You can’t keep Italian girls down. A friendship that is love, no holds barred, grew in the darkest of places. A rare flower indeed.

I arrived in New York in a rumbling, tired old train car which was leaking unforgivably in the heavy rain. After a year of some pretty insane adventures, great and small, I have been punched by disappointment more times than I can count. I never looked back, and I don’t care to. Being in New York was the brief moment between rounds in the ring. I’m back out of the corner now, home in my beloved Florence, and lumbering into round ten. NY patched me up and send me off. This is round 10. Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.